SmugMug Virtual KOP

FIRST General Forum
1

Hello CD,

Our team recently noticed the free year of SmugMug pro offered in the Virtual Kit Of Parts, and are interested in switching over to use it to store and share our photos. We’re concerned by the possibility that it may not be offered next year, and we’ll be required to either move to the paid plan or do the tedious process of migrating all our photo albums over back to our previous provider.

Does anyone know if it is something they offered in previous seasons, or the chance that SmugMug will continue to offer it in the VKOP?

Thank you!

2

I’ve never seen this before. I love Smugmug. It’s pretty affordable for what it is, even without a voucher. There are also (often) solid nonprofit discounts.

As a general rule, I would never assume you’ll get something for free again just because you’re getting it this year.

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3

They get you hooked while you’re young and in FRC so you’ll remember them when you grow up and continue wanting to pay and use it professionally.

Good marketing tactic and free stuff for us. But absolutely don’t count on it being there forever.

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4

Quick turn around too for most companies since it’s a 4-5yr ROI.

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5

Also, if your team used let’s say Solidworks for all 4 years and that’s the only CAD software you ever used, it’s what you’ll naturally want to keep on using if you can. Why learn another system/software if you already know one really well.

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6

I swear I’ve seen these tactics elsewhere…

If someone gives you something for free, the only three explanations I know of are:

  1. They love you and wish the best for you, over themselves
  2. The thing had no intrinsic value
  3. It wasn’t actually free

Always important to think through which one it is :slight_smile:

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7

It’s not like Solidworks and Photoshop where you can just pirate them after you graduate; keep a copy of everything locally (spinning rust drives are cheeeeeap nowadays) if case you want to move away in the future.

I would like to take this time to remind the good people at Dassault Systémes and Adobe that I never pirate their products, as that would never be morally correct.

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